


tell me that there’s something more than this

by mayerwien



Series: Stopping for a Spell [4]
Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Magic, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, IT'S BACK FAM, Light Angst, M/M, Mages, Magic, fiddler!leo, magic inn au, tragic backstory(tm), war mage!guanghong
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-24
Updated: 2018-06-24
Packaged: 2019-05-27 20:11:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,276
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15032297
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mayerwien/pseuds/mayerwien
Summary: Everyone said that Guanghong was born with fire in his veins. As a child, he could sense it, his magical gift growing inside of him and taking hold of him. But it wasn’t until the day Guanghong set his grandmother’s silk folding screen ablaze by accident, just by looking at it, that his parents hired a tutor for him—a retired war mage who was gruff but kind to the bewildered five-year-old, and who knew just what to do to teach him to control his power.Still, it took Guanghong several more years to realize that not all mages felt as he did. As though there were things constantly seething beneath his skin, aching to burst forth.





	tell me that there’s something more than this

**Author's Note:**

  * For [museicalitea](https://archiveofourown.org/users/museicalitea/gifts).



> Been a while since I’ve been here, too! To refresh my memory I checked the collaborative doc (encyclopedia???) that Meg and I made to plan all of “Stopping for a Spell” way back when, and WHEW THAT IS SOME TIMELINE WE CONCOCTED THERE. 
> 
> This is a thank-you fic for Megan, who was so kind to me this past week! She requested cute Leo and Guanghong, but uh, this wound up simultaneously being Guanghong’s Origin Story which is…more than slightly angsty oops. Still, I hope you enjoy?! Thank you again <3
> 
> For context: this fic is set during the autumn right after “every little thing she does is magic,” and roughly one year before “fields of gold” and “a yard with a garden." Title from “Run” by the Ransom Collective, which is a super appropriate theme song. And here we go!

Everyone said that Guanghong was born with fire in his veins. As a child, he could sense it, his magical gift growing inside of him and taking hold of him. But it wasn’t until the day Guanghong set his grandmother’s silk folding screen ablaze by accident, just by looking at it, that his parents hired a tutor for him—a retired war mage who was gruff but kind to the bewildered five-year-old, and who knew just what to do to teach him to control his power.

Still, it took Guanghong several more years to realize that not all mages felt as he did. As though there were things constantly seething beneath his skin, aching to burst forth.

When he turned thirteen, Guanghong was finally old enough to be enrolled in the royal university. As his father bid him goodbye, he clasped his shoulders and said, “You carry the name of the Ji family, my son, and I trust you shall carry it with pride. You are destined to be a great warrior. One day, you may singlehandedly turn the tide of battle.” Guanghong had wanted nothing else, ever since he learned what he was.

As he walked through its gates, the royal university towered above him like a dream. Its spires seemed to pierce the sky, and Guanghong thought he could feel the very air around him crackling with magic. It energized him as he breathed it in, and made him feel at home, too, in a way he hadn’t in his small mountain village where all the other children feared him—and he knew, finally, that he had arrived in the place where he belonged.

 

\--

 

Guanghong was sixteen when he was expelled.

His crime was a midnight duel, with a classmate who tormented the younger students relentlessly whenever the senior mages’ backs were turned. No one had been brave or principled enough to stop him, until Guanghong came along. Standing there across from him in the courtyard, Guanghong saw the smirk on the bully’s face, and his breathing had quickened as he seethed with rage—and something in him snapped without warning, and he let his fire _loose._

All things considered, the burns his opponent sustained weren’t as bad as they could have been. But as the brute’s mother was one of the city’s wealthiest and most esteemed nobles, Guanghong didn’t stand a chance. A signed notice was spelled to the door of his rooms: he was to vacate them in the next twenty-four hours, and if after that time Guanghong was seen within a thousand yards of the university grounds, he would be arrested by the royal guard.

 _I can’t go back to the village,_ Guanghong thought dazedly, as he stuffed clothes and books into his satchel with shaking hands. _Not anymore, never again. I can’t allow my family to be shamed because of what I’ve done._ So he did what any disgraced young man in his situation would do.

Guanghong ran.

He had no money for a horse or any provisions, so he left the city at once, on foot. For weeks after that, he hitched rides on merchants’ wagons and farmers’ carts whenever he could, not caring where they were going so long as it was away from the capital. At night Guanghong lit their fires for them, and cast wards around their campsites to keep them safe as they slept—and tried to hold back the bitterness he felt, and stem the flow of memories of the place where he had learned these things. To earn a little coin, Guanghong started to make candles by hand, spelling them to burn longer and hawking them in all the towns they passed through. He never told anyone where he was from, if they asked. There was no point.

If Guanghong thought his fortune couldn’t take another turn for the worse, he was wrong. He was walking down a forest road at dusk one evening when a hand holding a rag clamped over his mouth from behind, filling his nose and mouth with a sickly-sweet scent, and flooding his vision with darkness. He awoke in the grass, gods knew how many hours later, to the pitch-black of night and a light rain spattering his face.

The bandits, or whoever they were, had taken his purse, the clothes in his satchel, and even the boots he’d been wearing. At least they’d left him his books, Guanghong thought wryly, although even those were quickly growing damp and useless.

Shakily, he stood, propping himself up against a tree and struggling to quell his nausea—whatever drug they had used, it had been potent, and seemed to have put some kind of a damper on his magic. Squinting, Guanghong could make out pinpricks of light in the distance. So there was a town. He just had to make it there.

As the rain started to come down harder, Guanghong trudged onward in the direction of the lights, pausing every now and then to catch his breath. His lungs burned, and his ribs ached, and his teeth were chattering from the cold that soaked through his clothes to his bones. By the time he passed the signpost at the entrance to the town, dragging his feet through the mud, all of him felt numb, and he was so lightheaded he imagined he was floating.

Guanghong could have knocked on any door, but in his delirium he didn’t think to do so. Instead, he zigzagged down the empty main street and through the town square, and finally thought to approach the large building with the thatched roof that he could see through the haze of rain, when he collapsed. Scrabbling at the cobblestones, Guanghong pulled himself forward, inch by inch, crawling the rest of the way.

Finally, after what seemed an eternity, Guanghong pulled himself onto the step and scratched at the door feebly with his fingertips. Then, rolling onto his back, gasping as the rain drummed down on him, he thought that it didn’t matter anymore—that the gods could do with him as they willed, and he would not fight them. His entire life up to now, he figured, had merely been one of their games of dice; and whichever cruel trickster god had won it, he hoped they, at least, were pleased with the outcome.

 

\--

 

When Guanghong opened his eyes again, he was surrounded by sunlight and lying in a soft bed, and there was a boy sitting at the foot of it, eating a pear.

“Oh, good!” the boy exclaimed, flicking his floppy bangs out of his eyes with a toss of his head. “You’re awake. I’ll go tell Bella.” He took a huge bite of pear, _crunch,_ and hopped off the bed and dashed out the door before Guanghong could work up the voice to ask him anything. Sitting up, Guanghong realized he was in a small but cozy bedroom; there was a dresser with a basin and pitcher on the far end, and curtains embroidered with tiny flowers hung around the open window, through which the merry sounds of village life could be heard.

The person who came into the room next was a young woman, with intense eyes and dark hair cut neatly to her jaw. “By all the gods,” she said, pulling a chair up to sit at his bedside. “Hiroko heard you and thought you were some animal looking for shelter from the storm, before she opened the door. When she sent for me, she feared you might already be dead. And you very well could have been.” Her voice softened in concern. “What _happened_ to you?”

So Guanghong told her. He told her everything, the words pouring out of him in a flood—and all the while the young woman did not speak, merely watched his face. When he was finished, she reached out and gently touched his hand.

“All of that is behind you. You’re safe now,” she said.

The young woman then introduced herself as Isabella, the healer’s apprentice, and answered all Guanghong’s questions in return. This village he had ended up in was called Hasetsu. He was staying at the inn, and Hiroko, the woman who had found him on the doorstep, was the innkeeper.

“It…was kind of Mistress Hiroko to give me a room, but I have nothing to pay her with,” Guanghong said, feeling panic rise in him. “I can—I can find work when I’m well; work here even, if they’ll have me, but—“

Isabella stopped him with a look, something like puzzlement and pity mingled together. “You think anyone here would take money from you for this, after all you’ve been through?” she asked softly. “Guanghong. Don’t worry about any of that. All you have to focus on now is your own recovery. And when you are well, you are still more than welcome to stay, if you choose to.”

It was more kindness than Guanghong could bear. He looked down at the bedsheet, which was clean and neatly folded over him, and tried not to weep.

If Isabella noticed the tears forming in his eyes, she made no indication of it. “I’ll have some bread and broth brought up to you,” Isabella said briskly as she stood. “And fruit! We’re all up to our necks in apples and pears this season.”

“Wait,” Guanghong said, and Isabella turned in the doorway. “Who was the boy?”

Isabella smiled. “That’s Leo. He’s player folk; he makes for good company, when he’s in town. I’ll tell him you’re looking for him.”

“I’m not—“ Guanghong began to protest, but Isabella was already gone.

Ten minutes later, the boy named Leo poked his head around the doorframe, carrying a fully laden tray. Somehow he was also carrying a fiddle under his arm, and Guanghong blinked when he saw it.

“Bella says not to let you out of bed, at least for today,” Leo said cheerfully. “So if there’s anything you need, feel free to order me around. If you want me to hold the chamber pot for you, I promise not to look.”

Guanghong felt a blush rise to his cheeks. “I’ll be fine,” he said as Leo laid the tray over his knees. It was only then that he realized how hungry he was; he began by tearing into the hunk of bread, which was thick and doughy and slightly sweet. The broth was good too, full of vegetables, and seasoned with spices Guanghong couldn’t identify.

“You must be real clever if you were studying at the university,” Leo remarked as he sat in the chair, and then added sheepishly when Guanghong looked surprised, “Sorry. I was passing by your room earlier and I just happened to overhear.”

Guanghong swallowed his mouthful of broth. “Did you overhear that they expelled me, too?” Though it had been nearly three months, it was only his second time speaking this truth aloud, and it stung.

“I’m sorry. That _is_ a shame.” Leo leaned forward, elbows on his knees and his hands folded loosely together. “But it’s not all over, though! You can find a mage to be ‘prenticed to, like how Bella found Master Jean-Jacques. Finish your studies that way.”

Staring at Leo, Guanghong realized how vast the divide was between those within the walls of the university and those outside it—how there were people in the world who just had no _notion_ of its importance. “I can’t—I can’t just—no, that wouldn’t work. And even if I could find someone to teach me, it wouldn’t be the same.”

“Why not?” Leo tilted his head. “All that matters is that you get taught, surely?”

“It’s more than that. The university was my _home,”_ Guanghong said heatedly, his fingers curling tightly around the spoon handle. “You don’t understand—you don’t know what it’s like to have a—“

“A home?” Leo was still smiling, but there was something else in it now. “Why? Because I’m of the player folk? A vagrant, with ties to no one and nothing?”

Guanghong felt ashamed. “I’m sorry,” he murmured. “I didn’t mean to offend.”

Leo’s smile softened instantly. “No harm done. Look, Guanghong, all I’m saying is—if there’s anything I’ve learned in my life up to now, it’s that you can make a home wherever you are. And you could end up in _far_ worse places than Hasetsu, trust me.”

From what he had seen so far, Guanghong believed that, at least. He didn’t know yet if he would stay in this place; but Leo’s words gave him a sliver of hope, that perhaps starting his life over wouldn’t be quite so bad. He looked down at the bright green pear and the rosy apple on his tray, picked up the pear, and tossed it to Leo. “Friends?” he asked.

Catching the pear, Leo grinned, the easy smile spreading across his face like some part of summer still left over. “Friends,” he said.

Then Leo leaped to his feet and retrieved his fiddle from where he’d laid it on the table. “Shall I play you a tune?” he asked, wiggling his eyebrows.

Guanghong couldn’t even remember the last time he’d listened to music. “Please,” he said, smiling.

Leo cleared his throat, raised his fiddle to his chin, and set the bow to it. Then he began to play, and to Guanghong’s surprise, to sing. It was a harvest song he didn’t know, lively and crisp and clear—and as it wound around Guanghong, he felt the weight in his chest truly lighten for the first time in a long time, his heart and the melody both soaring out onto the autumn breeze.

**Author's Note:**

> I love how during this year you can use the length of Isabella’s hair as an indicator of time.
> 
> Also, somehow JJ is the Numair Salmalin in this AU, but Guanghong is the Arram Draper (plus the Keladry of Mindelan?). this will probably make sense to a total of maybe two (2) people out there but it’s ok


End file.
